


Try, Try, Try

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Gen, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, Protective Winchesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 21:57:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17475707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: All they wanted was to fix Cas’s wings, so he could fly again.You know what they say about the road to hell, and you’d think as Winchesters they’d know better.





	Try, Try, Try

“It was worth it,” Sam says.

“He’ll be okay,” Sam says.

“He just needs time,” Sam says.

And Dean knows Sam’s saying this for his benefit, trying to stop him feeling guilty, probably trying to do the same for himself.

But this was their idea, Cas wasn’t sold on it, didn’t think it was wise, didn’t really want to have anything to do with it. Maybe, looking back, that was his way of trying to tell them it just wouldn’t work.

And still, they’d kept at him. Because they knew how important his wings were, how he felt less an angel, and just _less_ because they were broken and malformed.

And because, even though Cas had never even hinted at it, they were both sure he spent every moment in pain.

So they’d kept at him, worn him down and pressed and pushed, and now Dean can see that’s why he said yes, because he could tell this mattered to them.

There’s a black little voice in Dean’s head that says Cas thinks it mattered to them because an angel who can fly again is more use than one that can’t, but he stamps down on it.

They’ve got Cas by that. He’s sure of it.

And so they did it. They cast their stupid spell, and Cas groaned and fell to his knees as the cracked arch of his wings formed like shadows, and then slowly filled out, huge feathers that shimmered from black to midnight blue, with lines of Grace along each shaft.

Cas was shaking when he pushed himself on to his feet, eyes wide with disbelief, almost seeming afraid to move them.

But Dean had said, “Yeah, Cas, go on,” and Cas had.

He’d flared the wings out, full and powerful, and Dean waited for Cas to just vanish, and there was a joke on his lips about whether or not he could remember what was the accelerator and what was the brake, but it stayed there.

Because nothing happened. The strain showed; Cas’s eyes glowed blue, and he grimaced as he tried to do as Dean had said.

Then he went pale, and the wings slumped like dead weight against his back.

“I can’t,” he’d said. “I can’t.”

And no matter what Sam says, Dean knows that this whole fucked up situation is, as usual, on them.

++

He finds Cas in the observatory, a room the angel’s shown a love of for some unknown reason.

The light in there catches his wings, reflecting in a rainbow of colour on them.

It catches Dean’s breath in his throat and holds him there, eyes wide and locked in place.

Cas is in the corner of the room. His wings, all Dean can see of him, are cupped around him in a dome of iridescent, glowing feathers.

They shift and ripple, as if aware of the unwanted attention, and Dean can almost feel himself backing up towards the door.

He stops. 

The last thing Cas needs right now is to be by himself. And while there’s a part of him that really doesn’t want to push in on this, to face Cas when this is all down to them and really, he has no way to fix it, Dean isn’t going to back down.

He goes closer, and crouches down just outside the feather bubble.

“Cas.”

The nearest wing twitches.

“Dammit,” Dean mutters, and then he carefully runs a hand down that wing, feels it go taut, tense, beneath his touch, and then finds the overlap where he can push his hands carefully in between. 

The wings push back, but Dean’s not scared. Cas isn’t going to hurt him, and so he keeps going, pressing on until he gets his shoulders through, then his upper body, and finally he’s nestled in there with Cas.

The angel doesn’t look at him, and Dean wishes there was a way, a spell he could cast, _something_ that would be like a shield or a block, to prevent he, and Sam, and Jack, from hurting Cas again.

They never meant to, but somehow they always managed it.

He shifts around, careful, aware that each movement puts him in contact with Cas’s wings and maybe they’re still tender from being so new. Still, there’s no helping it as he sits down next to Cas, nudges up against him.

“You okay?”

It seems a stupid question; Cas is sitting alone on the cold stone floor in the observatory, cocooned in his own wings and barely acknowledging Dean’s presence.

He is not okay, but Dean never claimed to be great with this stuff.

“We’re not giving up,” he goes on. “We didn’t think you’d ever get these wings back. And you did.”

He looks at the feathers around him, and reaches out to carefully adjust a couple that are already out of alignment with the others, huffing at them only just filled out and them mussed up already.

They’re not unlike Cas’s hair in that respect.

“So we’ll find a way to get you airborne with them again,” he says. “Just don’t give up on us.”

He startles when the wing closest to him nudges, pushing him nearer to Cas.

Dean grins. He can take a hint, and slips an arm around Cas, and tugs at him, until the angel’s head is resting on Dean’s shoulder.

“I’ve never given up on you,” Cas says. “You, Sam; you always find a way.”

He doesn’t sound as convinced this time, though, and Dean hugs him tighter, and hopes his brother and their kid are up to some intense research sessions over the next while.

Because he’s going to do whatever he has to for Cas to fly again.

Nothing else, right now, matters more.


End file.
